‘Didn’t seem worth mentioning, sir. As far as aces go, I’d say I was in the first rank of the second-raters.’
‘You are altogether too modest. I asked him what he wanted exactly, and he said he would show you the ropes, and then expect you to manage mostly on your own. You’d have to be good with the natives, learn Tamil, and keep your hands off the wives. You also have to be good at sport, or you won’t have much fun.’
‘I am good at sport. There’s nothing I like better.’
‘I understand they even have a wonderful golf course and some trout streams, and plenty of tennis. Well, dear boy, it would be a huge adventure and a tremendous opportunity. Are you prepared to take the gamble?’
‘I’d be very sorry to leave Henley’s. But yes. I think so. I’d do it. The question is, would Rosie? I couldn’t possibly leave Esther for any length of time. It’s bad enough having to be away in the week.’
‘If Rosie is difficult, I will have to steel myself to order her out of the house. We are in a knot, Daniel, and someone has to cut it. First of all we have to see if you and Colonel Bassett get on, of course. I’ve invited him to Sunday lunch.’
‘Colonel? He was a soldier?’
‘Indian Army. One of the Sikh regiments, I believe.’
‘We’ll certainly get on then.’
And they did. No one else at lunch got a word in, because all the talk was of Sikh regiments and sepoys.
Because Daniel was thirty years old, much older than the average ‘creeper’ who came out to learn the ropes, and because he was bringing a wife and child, he was to be treated less harshly than the youngsters. He would have servants, and his bungalow would be a mere mile from the factory, but he would still have to muster at dawn, and he would have to spend six months in the company of a young assistant manager at his division. Colonel Bassett told him he would have to learn twenty new Tamil words every day, and be tested on them, and his pay would at first be a pittance.
The one thing that he would not tolerate, said the Colonel, was Daniel ever thinking that he had become an expert on anything to do with Ceylon and its people until he had been there for twenty years. Until that time, only honest bafflement would do.
96
Tea at the Fairhead’s
‘Gracious me, it’s you,’ said Fairhead, as he stood at the door and looked at his visitor. ‘How on earth did you know where we live?’
‘Well, I am psychic,’ returned Madame Valentine. ‘I have powers, exceptional ones, such as the power to read what you wrote in my visitors’ book! And you have the only house in the street with an unpronounceable name.’
‘Sophie’s idea. It was called The Laurels, even though there aren’t any.’
‘What on earth does it mean? Paleo something or other.’
‘Paleo Periboli? It’s Greek. The Old Garden. Sophie has a notion that we should recreate the Garden of Eden in our own domain, energy and weather permitting. Ah, forgive me, do come in. My wife will be glad to see you, I’m sure. I think she’s in the conservatory mangling some pelargoniums. Darling!’ he called. ‘Madame Valentine is here!’
Sophie emerged shortly, wearing wellington boots, and bearing a pair of scissors and a ball of green gardening twine. ‘Madame Valentine!’ she cried. ‘How positively miradibulous to see you.’
‘Miradibulous?’
‘One of her neologisms,’ offered Fairhead. ‘Darling, should you be wearing wellies indoors?’
‘These are my indoor wellies,’ she replied. ‘They leak, so I can’t wear them outdoors. They are ideal for gardening in the conservatory.’
‘The ultimate fate of all wellington boots is to spring a leak,’ said Fairhead. ‘That is the habitual manner of their demise. In the trenches a leaky wellington boot did more than anything else to make one doubt the love of God.’
‘They make wonderfully eccentric flowerpots,’ said Madame Valentine. ‘Put them by the door with a geranium in each, or a little clump of marigolds. The leak acts as drainage. One can make use of one’s misfortune.’
‘I shall do it immediately,’ said Sophie, kicking them off so that they flew across the hallway and crashed into the walking-stick stand, causing the canes and shooting sticks to rattle.
‘Do be careful, darling,’ said Fairhead.
‘Henceforth I shall horticult barefoot in the conservatory, and leaky wellies shall be herbiferous.’
When they were seated in the drawing room, with their cups of tea on their laps, and Victoria sponge cake waiting on the trolley, Fairhead asked, ‘And how is Spedegue?’
‘Oh, grumpy and disapproving and truculent, as always,’ responded Madame Valentine.
‘If there were prizes for truculosity she would scoop all of them,’ said the barefoot Sophie.
There was a pause, and Madame Valentine noticed the book that lay upon the small table by Fairhead’s armchair. It was The Historical Jesus and the Theological Christ. ‘Is that any good?’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking of reading it.’
‘It’s excellent,’ replied Fairhead. ‘It describes what we can work out about Jesus the man from the synoptic gospels, and then talks about how he got theologised, if there is such a word. I should probably say “Christologised”. The author assures us that there will be no Second Coming, which, I must say, is something I’ve already been suspecting for some considerable time. It’s a marvellously clear read, but I suppose I ought to be resisting anything that might exacerbate my scepticism.’
‘We strongly disapprove of exacerbation,’ said Sophie brightly. ‘It’s so draining. And of course one should definitely eschew egregious obscurantism.’
Madame Valentine laughed, then composed herself, and said, ‘I have come to ask you about something that is very close to my heart, and is causing me a great deal of unease.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Fairhead.
‘Yes. Well, the long and short of it is, do you think I’m a fraud?’
‘A fraud? Good God, no. Why would you think that?’
‘I worry that I might be. I mean, sometimes I don’t know the answers to things, and I just make something up. And then sometimes the things I made up do come true. Sometimes I’m certain of something and it never happens. I can’t tell you how worrying it is. And sometimes I think that perhaps I am, after all, just another madwoman of a certain age with delusions.’
‘You’re dressed very respectably in tweeds,’ said Sophie, ‘you can’t possibly be mad.’
‘Do try to be serious, darling,’ said Fairhead.
‘Oh, but I am being! Mad people nearly always dress up in odd ways, don’t they?’
‘If you were mad,’ said Fairhead, ‘it wouldn’t explain the noises and the music and the strange apports at your séances, and it wouldn’t explain why you get so many things right. How would it explain the photograph of my sister in Christabel’s camera?’
‘The best explanation,’ said Sophie, ‘is that you have an unusual but unreliable gift.’
‘One clergyman told me it was a gift from the Devil, and he was using me to spread false belief and delusion. That kind of accusation is very unsettling. I lose faith in myself. I wonder if I should give up and simply teach music. I could scratch by on that.’
‘Being a clergyman is no licence to infallibility,’ observed Fairhead. ‘The world is far stranger than I used to think it was. I have considerable doubts myself. When it comes down to it, I am probably more sceptical than Bertrand Russell himself.’
‘Are you?’
‘Oh yes. I question the truth of almost everything I used to believe.’
‘Really? I suppose it was the war.’
‘Of course. The men used to have a prayer which went “Dear God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.” I know exactly how they felt, as I felt the same myself. The way I see it now is that I am a clergyman because it seems like exactly the right thing for me to be, as if I had little choice in the matter. It is a vocation. I can console a dying person even if I do not beli
eve in the virgin birth or the supremacy of the King, or even if I think the doctrine of the Trinity is an incomprehensible muddle, just to take some examples. I grew up Anglican, so this is where I fit and the place from where I inevitably start. I still see how beautiful my version of Christianity is. I still love it, as one can still adore an unsuitable lover or a cruel mother. I will work from where I am, in order to do what I am called to do. My advice to you is to see your gift as a vocation, and follow it through even if it troubles you.’
‘As yours troubles you?’
‘Indeed. As mine troubles me.’
‘I have no vocation,’ sighed Sophie.
‘Of course you do,’ said Fairhead.
‘Oh, I think you do,’ said Madame Valentine, ‘you just haven’t perceived it yet.’ She sipped her tea. ‘And there’s another thing. I am concerned about your sister.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one who only came once.’
‘That’ll be Rosie,’ said Fairhead. ‘She stopped coming on the advice of a curate.’
‘She would have stopped anyway,’ said Sophie, ‘you can’t just blame the curate. She does what she thinks the Bible tells her to do, and that’s that.’
‘Oddly enough, a young curate did come and see me for a while. He wanted to know about his brothers. Anyway, that young man who was trying to get through to her when she came is still agitated and still wants to tell her something.’
‘Does he? How do you know?’
‘He tries to come through even when I’m not sitting.’
‘What does he say?’
‘Well, I don’t know. All I know is that he’s got something urgent to say. When I feel his presence I suffer terrible disturbance. It’s hard to take.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Sophie, ‘your gift is a bit of a curse, isn’t it?’
‘We’re all worried about Rosie,’ said Fairhead. ‘It’s clear that at times she makes Daniel extremely unhappy, and then they’re all right again for a while. There’s talk of them going to Ceylon. Daniel might have landed a plum job, it seems. Let’s hope it comes to something. By the way,’ added Fairhead, changing the subject, ‘do you think it’s possible that one can, so to speak, project one’s spirit to another place when one is still alive?’
‘Witches used to call it “sending their fetch”,’ replied Madame Valentine. ‘As a matter of fact, somebody published a book about it a few years ago. Um, it was called Phantasms of the Living, I believe. I can’t remember the name of the author, but he was a psychical researcher, and he collected hundreds of stories. It was a frightfully big book.’
Fairhead found a pencil and pad of paper and scribbled the information down.
‘Why do you ask?’ said Madame Valentine.
‘You know that I went to see a great many families of men under my pastoral care who were killed in the war?’
‘No, but now I do. How very good of you.’
‘It was remarkable how many people told me that they’d had inexplicable visits from their loved ones either when they were dying or when they were still perfectly all right in the days just before their death. And Daniel, you know, Rosie’s husband, said that many of his comrades knew exactly when they were about to die, and gave him instructions about what to do, often with some urgency, it seems.’
‘How wonderfully strange the world is!’ exclaimed Sophie. ‘Do you think that anyone will ever really understand it? I mean get to the bottom of it? I don’t think they ever will. I’m sure that I won’t.’
Fairhead reflected, and replied, ‘Even if you did, how would know for sure that you had finally arrived? What is the criterion for arrival? Wouldn’t you go on looking anyway?’
‘I think you’d have to,’ said Madame Valentine, ‘even when you were dead. As far as I can tell, even dying makes us none the wiser.’
‘It’s wretchedly frustrating,’ said Fairhead. ‘I’m a minister of religion, and I don’t think I really know a damned thing. Did I tell you about Caroline Rhys Davids, the mother of the ace? She wrote all those books about Buddhism. No? Well, she told me that after he was killed she had long sessions of automatic writing with a planchette, and that he came through very clearly. She said it was comforting, but when she began to feel a bit better she stopped doing it.’
Madame Valentine said, ‘Did you know that fictional characters sometimes come through? What could be stranger than that?’
Fairhead stubbed his cigarette out, and said, ‘Madame Valentine, what do you think of the idea of collaborating on some books on these subjects?’
‘Collaborating?’
‘Well, it’s a fascinating subject, isn’t it? I mean the afterlife, if there is one. Your experience is vastly greater than mine, but even so, I think I have enough for several volumes of my own.’
‘I have no talent whatsoever for writing,’ said Madame Valentine, ‘I’m a musician.’
‘Well, I do have some facility. I’ll do the writing, and anything you do write, I can smarten up. Shall we? Shall we give it a bash? Think what a success Raymond was.’
‘Yes, do let’s. I have so much to get off my mind. I think it might help.’
After she had left, Fairhead said to Sophie, ‘Do you mind, my dear? It was very spur of the moment.’
‘Mind? Why should I mind?’
‘Well, you know, working with another woman. On a project.’
Sophie laughed. ‘Darling, I couldn’t possibly be jealous of Madame Valentine. She is very obviously Uranian.’
‘Uranian?’
‘She bats for the other side. A tribadist. A fricatrice. The other Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name Because It Is Still Unsuspected.’
‘What? What on earth are you talking about?’
Sophie sighed and shook her head. ‘Do I have to speak…darling, she is very obviously Sapphic.’
‘Sapphic?’
‘Yes, an invert. Like Christabel and Gaskell.’
‘Are they? Gaskell and Christabel? Sapphic?’
‘You can’t possibly have imagined otherwise.’
‘I just thought that all the young men got killed, so a lot of girls are left out.’
‘Darling, Gaskell is viraginous. You must have noticed, surely?’
‘What?’
‘Androgynous. Darling, she’s practically a man.’
‘Yes, but Christabel is really quite…feminine, is she not? I know she’s fearsomely lithe and athletic, but even so, she’s an English rose if ever there was one.’
‘Well, I dare say she might have been attracted to a man if the right sort of man had turned up. But he didn’t.’ She paused. ‘I’ve always wondered if Christabel might be a bit of both.’
‘Ambidextrous, so to speak?’
‘I expect there’s a proper word,’ said Sophie.
‘Ambisexual perhaps?’
‘I believe that “ambisextrous” is just catching on.’
Fairhead leaned back and put his hands behind his head. ‘I really am very sorry that you’ve enlightened me. How am I supposed to feel comfortable with Christabel and Gaskell any more? And write books with a Sapphic medium?’
‘Amor vincit omnia! You adore them and they adore you, and you firmly believe that Gaskell has the most fascinating eyes that anyone ever saw, and your pen name will be Valentine Fairhead, or Fairhead Valentine.’
‘Better toss for it,’ said Fairhead, ‘or it might lead to bitterness. And for some reason I’ve just remembered that I think it’s high time we got a cat. Caractacus is such a character, isn’t he? It would be nice to have a quirky cat like that, with amber eyes and a lopsided moustache.’
‘Hmm,’ said Sophie, ‘you might have been reminded because “ambisextrous” rhymes with “puss”. Anyway, I couldn’t possibly be jealous of Madame Valentine. She’s not your sort at all.’
‘Yes,’ said Fairhead, ‘I like little waifs like you, but Madame Valentine is “luggage in advance and heavy goods to follow”, without a doubt.’
‘Sh
e is macromastic and steatopygous.’
‘Yea, verily.’
Thus it was that Fairhead failed to feel uncomfortable working with Madame Valentine, and the first of their books, Intimations of Immortality, was published the following year, in time for Armistice Day.
97
A Letter from Willy and Fritzl
19 March 1922
Very Honoured Captain Pitt,
We are writing with the help of a dictionary. Naturally when we prisoners were in Scotland we English learned.
We are aye much hoping that you survived and this letter to your mother’s address are sending. We are ever thankful for your mercy and knightliness and we wish always that you with God’s blessing go.
We have often asked ourselves what happened to our Walfisch. Did she live, and where lies she now? According to our opinion the Snipe a frigging excellent even more than the Camel was. We like to fly again one day, but now we for jobs are long time searching. We small hope. We want motorcycle shop to attempt. You know that our fatherland Germany buggered and scunnered is, but getting better.
If you still live, please dear Captain Pitt, to us reply. We should meet us somewhere and talk of aeroplanes. Come to Germany!
Fritz Hoffman and Wilhelm Spatz
PS While we prisoners were we have learned from the Jock guards mostly the bad words. Ecrivez en Français si vous préférez.
98
The Letter to Mme Pitt
The Grampians
23 March 1922
My dear Mme Pitt,
I write to you in some haste, but hoping that you are well, as I am.
My dear Mme Pitt, we have a sticky situation that I believe a visit from you may be able to resolve. I have no doubt that Daniel will already have spoken to you about it.
In short, Daniel has landed a most wonderful position in Ceylon which will suit him perfectly and, I believe, set him up for life. The problems are these, however.
Firstly, Rosie is extremely reluctant to leave the family home. Hitherto she has evaded going to Birmingham, which is perhaps more understandable, and also to Argentina, where there was an opportunity in aviation, but in this case she is flailing around for reasons that one knows are simply spurious, such as that Esther might get ill on the ship or get leprosy once she has arrived. I have told her repeatedly that the climate in the highlands of Ceylon is most salubrious, but she will not listen.